{"id":6515,"date":"2026-07-28T16:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T16:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=6515"},"modified":"2026-07-28T16:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T16:22:12","slug":"usque-ad-mortem-bibendum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2026\/07\/28\/usque-ad-mortem-bibendum\/","title":{"rendered":"Usque ad mortem bibendum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By gatecrashing our brains, beer has shaped human history.  The alcohol in beer is ‘ethanol’, a toxic substance that can poison other animals but we humans have enzymes that remove ethanol from the body.  We inherited this ability from the apes who, over the millennia, came down from the trees and foraged fallen fruit that had fermented.  This gave primates, and later humans, a love for the taste and smell of alcohol, which gave us an edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, early humans learnt how to make booze intentionally.  Evidence from China reveals 10,000 year-old uncovered jars that contained a beverage akin to mead.  The earliest recorded evidence of humans brewing beer was from the Sumerians who lived in and around Babylon from ca 4000 BCE to ca 2000 BCE in what is now Iraq.  They loved their beer, drinking an estimated litre a day each from long straws placed in a communal bowl.  Barley, pomegranates and dates were the main ingredients.  The Romans drank mainly wine in preference to beer but were ultimately defeated by the beer-drinking barbarians to the North.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here and elsewhere beer helped human settlements to grow without falling apart, although several may have fallen over.  Evidence abounds of shared feasting where beer fostered group cohesion such as singing, dancing, story-telling and even worship.  Such activities, then as now, reinforce social bonds and create feelings of pleasure, reward and stress release.  One could add that it makes potential mates seem more desirable, thus encouraging population growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, regulars at a local pub have large and close support networks that not only enhance well-being but also act as a buffer against mental and physical injury.  One academic, Edward Slingerland of the University of British Columbia (Canada), argues that beer is more than a companion to human progress but a pre-condition for it.  It allowed the emergence of large-scale stratified human societies by encouraging tribal primates to co-operate with strangers.  Humans could not have built civilisation without first getting drunk enough to intermingle and co-operate at a level unusual or unheard of in other species.  As a recent article in the Economist <\/em>(20 December 2025) put it, “human civilization has marched forward to the sound of clinking goblets<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, new worries about alcohol are spreading.  Quite a few friends and family of mine have been \u2018ordered\u2019 to cease drinking alcohol altogether, to their collective and probably unnecessary misery.  Surely moderation would be preferable to abstinence.  Their alternative is non-alcoholic beer but it is debatable whether these beers are becoming more palatable.  I have yet to drink one that even closely matches the real thing and I am not alone. Scientists continue to labour to produce non-alcoholic beers and the market for it is growing, if very slowly.  UK sales of it are still only 1.4% of the market for alcoholic beer while sales of that have declined only marginally from an annual per capita average of 8.9 litres in 2011 to 8.6 litres in 2021.  So, there is hope for us all yet, especially if our pubs accommodate the small but growing market for non-alcoholic herbal beers and similar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sambrook\u2019s, my local brewery in Wandsworth, brewed a non-alcoholic beer about three years ago called Stand Easy but it was soon discontinued because it didn’t sell enough.  I drank a non-alcoholic keg lager there in April called Budvar Nealko, brewed in Chechia with Moravian malt and Saaz hops just like its famous, alcoholic elder brother.  Despite being drinkable, I found it a little dry and metallic with no after-taste whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember, some years ago, an American TV advert for Coors Lite.  Two bright young things (BYTs) were prancing around, necking this beverage from the bottle.  First BYT says to second BYT, with an enormous, grotesque grin, “\u2026and NO lingering after-taste<\/em>!”  Surely the whole point of beer is to have a lingering after-taste\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Pictured is a pint of Oatmeal Stout (5.5% ABV) brewed by John Hatch at Sambrook\u2019s.  It features chocolate malt balanced with Golding and Admiral hops, plus oats that contain beta-glucans, a soluble fibre to help line the intestine and prevent cholesterol getting into your body.  It also helps to regulate blood sugar by acting as a pro-biotic.  Result is a healthier gut and a damn good beer.  \u2018Breakfast beer\u2019?  Why not!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final word goes to Des de Moor, celebrated London beer writer, sadly no longer with us, who said; “Beer is an artefact of human society, not simply an intoxicant but capable of being enjoyed and appreciated in the same way as all the other fine things in life and should be celebrated as such<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter J Sutcliffe<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By gatecrashing our brains, beer has shaped human history.  The alcohol in beer is ‘ethanol’, a toxic substance that can poison other animals but we humans have enzymes that remove… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6517,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6515\/revisions\/6517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}